Lose like Wenger

This weekend, the English Premier League will host the first super match of the winter - the most important and eventful - segment of the season: Arsenal - Chelsea. The teams seem to have switched roles: the Gunners will take the field as a stable, almost incapable of losing leader, the Blues as a team dreaming of spectacular football.

Roman Abramovich's entourage attributes to the governor of Chukotka words that (if they really were uttered) could serve as a completely accurate justification for the stunning September resignation of the Chelsea head coach: "It is better to lose like Wenger than to win like Mourinho." Several titles won by Chelsea under the Portuguese coach could not muffle the feelings of healthy envy in his owner and managers when watching the dashing and captivatingly beautiful, if not quite pragmatic, Arsenal football.

The new Blues coach Avram Grant immediately proclaimed himself an admirer of Arsenal colleague Arsene Wenger, and the word "spectacle" sounds in his speech more often and more accentuated than the word "result". The thing, however, is that Wenger is no longer losing. Only one of the 22 official matches played this season so far this column has seen Arsenal score less than the opposition, but it was a marginally decisive away match against Sevilla, played by the second squad.

The current Arsenal is a rare case of the positive impact on the team of the departure of its longtime leader. Left in the summer without Thierry Henry, through whom almost all of Arsenal's attacks passed, Wenger's team, which was far from stereotyped before, added even more unpredictability. Aggravation in the attack can now be expected from any of the midfielders – Rosicky, Flamini, Walcott and Denilson scored more than once. Alexander Gleb, who previously hit on goal only when he couldn’t pass to Henry at all, has already set a new career record for the number of goals per season - 5. 20-year-old Catalan Cesc Fabregas entered the condition of a full-fledged world star and continues to develop fellow playmakers have an inferiority complex: scores (11 goals in 18 matches), gives (8 assists), keeps pace in defense and so deftly fastens defense and attack together that the gaps between them are no longer visible. And all this despite the fact that with the effectiveness of the forwards of Arsenal, in general, the order is complete. Adebayor, van Persie, Eduardo and Bendtner have already scored 25 goals - despite the fact that only the first (reissue of the Nigerian Nwankwo Kanu, supplemented and corrected) has a permanent place in the first team.

Now it has finally become clear why Wenger has been collecting so many attacking players of the same type for all these years: young, light, nimble, devoid of complexes and gaps in technology. He believed in the possibility of using all these players at the same time, in the ability to create an almost musical harmony between them, and if he created some quantitative reserve, then in case of injuries to which such players are very susceptible. The absence for many weeks of last season's top scorer, Robin van Persie, at Arsenal just seems to have gone unnoticed.

The solemn reports from Arsenal do not stop there: in the fall, an unprecedented increase in the club's financial performance was announced in the first year of its performance on the brand new sparkling glass and metal 60,000th. The Gunners' revenues after moving to the Emirates from the 38,000th Highbury jumped by 46% (to £201m), and net profit - by 274% (to £51m). Arsenal not only broke into the top of the English clubs in terms of profitability (albeit not by much), it once again illustrated a paradigm shift in modern football, a new interpretation of pragmatism and a new role for spectacle. Built on intuition, Arsenal's football, thin and light (sometimes to the point of lightness), makes this team vulnerable to more organized and prudent opponents. But it sells better and better, you want to watch it again and again. It has been a year and a half since the introduction of the Emirates, matches on it begin with a “sold out” sign posted at the box office. Full houses there even in VIP-boxes with their record cost for England.

If desired, Chelsea's new ideology in principle - so far expressed only in words - can also be considered as follows: this is not a romantic impulse of a football fan Roman Abramovich, but the exact calculation of Abramovich the businessman. People from his environment do not refute this version.